Bosnia's Serb leader will ask a regional parliament to cancel a referendum on the country's judicial system after receiving assurances on Friday from EU's top foreign policy official that their concerns will be addressed in direct talks with the bloc.

"The referendum is no longer needed," Milorad Dodik said at a joint press conference with Catherine Ashton in Banja Luka — the home of the parliament of the Serb region of Bosnia.

The threat of referendum plunged Bosnia in one of the worst political crisis the country experienced since the end of the 1992-1995 war.

The vote was scheduled for mid-June and was to reflect Bosnian Serb disapproval of the federal war crimes court — which Dodik claims is biased against Serbs — and the actions the country's top international administrator who oversees the running of the country and the implementation of the peace agreement that ended the war.

Ashton arrived in the region unexpectedly late Thursday, demonstrating international concerns over the issue.

Following the talks with Dodik, Ashton said that the EU will open talks with Bosnia's Serbs to try and address some of their concerns regarding the work of courts.

Bosnia was divided into ethnic Serb and Croat-Bosniak halves after the war.

Serbs are seeking more powers for their mini-state and also question the overall authority of top administrator, the Austrian diplomat Valentin Inzko. The United States and the EU, meanwhile, insist on strengthening the central state institutions.

Inzko answers to the U.N. Security Council and has almost unlimited power over Bosnia's state institutions under the United States-brokered Bosnian peace treaty which allows him to annul or impose laws or even fire local politicians, including presidents.

In April the Bosnian Serb parliament said it will question the envoy's authority and the legality of every decision he has made since the war ended.

Both the Serbs and the EU want a judicial reform, but have opposite ideas of what it should look like.

SPECIAL THANK YOU:

PLEASE DONATE:

Srebrenica Genocide is not a matter of anybody's opinion; it's a judicial fact recognized first by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and subsequently by the International Court of Justice.